Sword Art Online

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Warning: Weeaboo shit ahead

Sword Art Online is a Japanese media franchise about a guy named Kirito and his adventures in VRMMOs, it is known far and wide for not being well understood, and EXTREMELY Skubby, for many reasons, some real, genuine flaws, but a LOT of fake criticism from people who never watched it, and just take some shitty internet videos word as absolute law, but as said earlier, the series has quite the problems of it's own, and is pretty mediocre all thing considered

Background

SAO was written as a series of web novels by Reki Kawahara in 2002, just shy of .Hack//song's release date in 2003, funny, considering that people accuse SAO of ripping sign off, Kawahara based the "game" of SAO on the MMOs he played at the time, so runescape, Ultima online etc etc, as such the game shares many things in common with them, like a skill based system that improves with usage, no classes and other stuff, an anime came out in 2012.

Synopsis

Kazuto Kirigiya, also known on the web as Kirito, gets his hands on the newest game system, the nerve gear, and its launch title, Sword Art Online, for which Kirito was a beta tester, shortly after launching the game and watching some typical MMO shit play out, as well as teaching some basic game mechanics to the Yamcha of the cast, everyone gets teleported to the 1st level town square, where SAO's creator shows up and gives us the plot, everyone is now a hostage in SAO, if they die in the game, they die in real life as the Nerve Gear fries their brains like a microwave, the only way to escape is to beat the game.

A month or so later, everyone is mad at the beta testers, since they believe them to have an unfair advantage, they then get called "Beaters" for some stupid reason, eventually some people get to the first floor boss and get wrecked, as it turns out the boss doesn't use the same weapon he used in the beta version, Kirito eventually defeats him with the help of Asuna, his eventual love interest, Kirito gets a badass coat from the boss and reveals himself as a beater, he then tells everyone that the other beta testers were scrubs and most of them died already, this gets him a lot of hate, good for him since everyone will leave him alone.

Later still, Kirito comes across a small guild called The Moonlit Black Cats, joins them, but hides his level, everything is hunky dory until most of the members are killed by a trap in a high level dungeon. Kirito then starts rising through levels hyper fast since he solo grinds high level encounters, but eventually joins Asuna's guild, Knights of the Blood, but almost gets killed by Asuna's bodyguard after Kirito beat the shit out of him for being a creep.

Finally after a lot of shitty filler, two things are discovered, that Kirito can dual wield, something only the player with the highest reaction speed can have, and that the leader of Knights of the Blood, Heathcliff, is actually the creator of the game, Kiyaba Akihiko, he and Kirito fight, Asuna sacrifices herself, Kirito is almost killed but has a epic main character moment where he kills Kiyaba before his avatar shatters, Kiyaba takes Kirito to the top of SAO's tower where he transported Asuna, and they have a pointless chat about nothing important as SAO is completed and everyone wakes up, but actually 300 people including Asuna are still trapped in the game by some creepy fucker who is getting adopted by Asuna's parents so he can inherit the company (this is actually a lot more common in Japan then you'd think), said creepy fucker is trying to develop mind control technology to sell to foreign militaries, and is using the 300 people trapped to use as guinie pigs, he also wants to use the mind control technology to make Asuna his submissive wife, this obviously doesn't fly with Kirito so he invades the new VRMMO the creepy fucker is running, Alphiem online, along with his cousin-sister, who wants to be a lot more then just cousins, but we also learn the Kirito was actually adopted by his uncle and aunt when he was young as his parents died, but he found out the truth when he was very young, so his only way to cope was to play MMOs, giving us an explanation for his attitude towards working with others. Eventually he beats creepy fucker, once in the game using admin powers as Alphiem was build using the same engine that powered SAO, allowing Kirito to use Kiyaba's admin powers, and once in real life after creepy fucker confronts him in a parking lot and fails his stealth roll to backstab, and then, after all that, Kiyaba's ghost or some shit comes in and give Kirito SAO's source code, allowing a new generation of VRMMOs

Shit That Doesn't Make Sense

• Kirito more or less allows the Moonlit Black Cats to die because he didn't want to expose his level
• Kiyaba never actually explains his reasoning for trapping people in SAO beyond "muh God complex"
• The ending of the Aincrad arc is extremely confusing without rewatching it a few times, as to the average viewer it looks as if Kirito resurrects himself
• There is a emotional support AI called Yui, she shows up in some filler and doesn't show up again until the start of the Alphiem arc, when she could have been used to great effect at the end of the Aincrad arc
• There's quite a bit of filler, truth be told at least most of the filler introduces characters and concepts used later on, but some of it is just outright awful, and serves no purpose
• Kirito for some reason gets a harem of girls, and honestly it's entirely pointless as none of them are even given consideration as actual competition for Aduna

Shit That Makes Sense, But People Are Too Dumb To Pay Attention

• There's a fight on a bridge that has Kirito just power through the attacks of 5 different players, this is often pointed at as proof Kirito is an OP Mary Sue, but remember that Kirito is around level 80, and is fighting guys level 25 - 30, and frankly Kirito' s Battle Healing skill sucks ass, it heals a 28th of his health every 10 seconds, but apparently people didn't listen, as this point is dragged around the internet like Hector
• In the Alphiem arc, there is a scene where Kirito uses illusion magic to make himself look like a giant monster, this is of course only an illusion, with one of the guys in the ambush party that attacked him even telling them it's an illusion, people act like this scene paints Kirito even more OP

Where'd This Come From Anyway?

One day a mildly popular YouTuber named Digibro made a video criticizing SAO, despite the video being utter shot in almost every way, with a million different problems with his analysis (with Digibro himself even admitting the video was bad), people clung to the video, eventually other people started making their own shitty analysis videos, with many of the same problems as did Digibro' s video, giving SAO a sullied reputation it honestly doesn't deserve